151

I am again sitting on the edge of my bed typing with two fingers on a poorly balanced IPad. Outside it's muggy and hot but I haven't been out in days. I exist in a twilight state that demands I sleep when I'm able to catch it. If it lands upon you, lucky soul, just lie down where you are and prepare for wonder.  The other night I coughed from 2am through Noon. Ephemera of the genus snot has pored out of me. Gunk of the genus lung in equal measure. You just have to take it, work through it, don't freak out. That gross you just coughed up looking like a snot web is better off outside the body.

I named this post 151 because I usually like to note events of importance, and I think the 150th post is, but that poor screed was written with a temperature of 102 and raging diarrhea that threatened to turn me into a raisin. In the hospital I had a bedside commode which is a fancy name for a very large bucket with a lid attached to a frame. It beats a bedpan by a mile, but you have to be able to get out of bed to use it. A nurse will help you if you want but come on...let me lose all my dignity a bit more slowly than that. 

In the latter days of my stay I began to be more insistent about not being awakened for ridiculous reasons, and the last few days I actually slept a few hours. The midnight, 4am, 8am, vitals checks excepted. No one escapes that. 

No one escapes hearing, too, "that's my job, I'm required to..." Or "our protocol demands it." You will hear this nearly immediately upon asking any question of why a telemetry tech performs maintenance on your heart monitor at 1am, shaking you awake in a dark room while screaming your name (I threw that one out of my room. Her response? "I'm just doing my job.") Ok, bitch, my job is shitting in this bed. I'll get right to it.

I don't know that Bloomington Hospital, proud palace of the IU Health system, is just another corporate monkey idly tossing its feces against a display window of "customer service".  I am, I'll have you know, until I don't want to give blood at 2am. Then, fuck me, it's protocol time! 

This was different from my two day surgical recovery in a private room. Those first horrible days spent waiting for a room to open up with a mumbling Alzheimer's patient 5 feet away-- I felt awful, that was just the portal to hell. Oh, and there was a truly special nurse named Patti who told me on my second day that if I didn't get up I was not participating in my own recovery. Bitch, I can't breathe and have no energy!  I hope there is a circle and a hell, and an everlasting fire with her stupid bitch name on it. 

Being home has its own challenges.  My bed doesn't adjust and I really need a new mattress. The house is being painted so there's more noise than usual. I walk more, but now is the time to participate. I feel myself getting better but in tiny little steps. They tell me I have two more weeks to overcome the infection and past that, one has to regain weight and try to climb the hill again, muscle tissue ravaged for the third time. No one gives you a map for this because they simply could not.

And that is why I want you to know this is post 151.  Fuck not winning.